Thawing
permafrost
It's a silent killer,
often not recognised: the thawing of the permafrost.
And it's causing
much havoc since all roads, pipelines and houses in the north of Alaska
are built on it. Now, when global warming is speeding up, the once frozen
layer beneath is turning into mush. As Anchorage Daily News has written
last year: "toppled spruce, roller-coaster bike trails, rippled
pavement, homes and buildings that sag into ruin. There are omens of
what scientist fear will happen on a large scale across the Arctic if
water and air continue to warm as fast as climate models predict."
There's big controversy
nowadays is how fast this process goes. Last year an influential report
prepared by David Lawrence of the National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR) has shown that the top three metres of permafrost could melt
by the end of this century.
Under the most extreme
scenario of the supercomputer model global warming will alter ecosystems
across Alaska, Canada and Russia on a scale unseen for thousands of
years. And then it gets worse. Really worse: "methane, an 80-fold
stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, could ooze from the soggy
dirt and amplify global warming", Lawrence told the international
press beginning this year. Or, like another scientist has put it: "it's
like taking food out of a freezer… leave it outside a few days
and it rots, turning soil from a sink of greenhouse gasses into an increasingly
faster emitter."
Vladimir Romanowsky,
a leading permafrost researcher at the UAF (University of Alaska Fairbanks),
disagrees. He doesn't believe it will go that fast. Indeed the thawing
of the permafrost has begun. But the melting won't reach two to three
metres the entire region. According to him, the NCAR computer model
didn't take into account some natural factors such as the deeper layers
of permafrost under the surface.
We have arranged an exclusive interview
and a field trip with him, as well as with other well-known permafrost
researchers in Fairbanks. What can be seen at the spot? Which measures
can be taken? And how fast the thawing of permafrost goes, based on
2006 research?
